Archives

Liberal Party leaders heard concerns of delegates – new constitution passed with amendments.

Posted by Scott Tribe on May 29, 2016, at 8:21 am |

After all the buildup to a possible split in the party over the Liberal Party’s proposed constitutional changes, delegates backed the new constitution overwhelmingly to the tune of 96% – but only after the Liberal Party leadership realized that a fair # of delegates were not happy – good on the LPC hierarchy for realizing this and responding to it by putting forward several amendments to address those concerns, which helped ease opposition.

I also gathered from reading a few delegates social media comments that the tension over delegates being bullied and intimidated (a chief concern of mine last week in my prior blogpost) was removed directly by this statement from the Prime Minister directly to the delegates:

Trudeau directly addressed the allegations of intimidation, telling opponents of the proposal: “It takes courage to speak out against something your party leadership believes in and I want you to know I admire and thank you for doing it.”

I give big props to Prime Minister Trudeau for being gracious and conciliatory to those folks who expressed their convictions not initially agreeing with all of what he was advocating, and resisting the pressure to fall in line.

That said, the complaints about the process that (nearly) got the party to the point of a divide remain, even among those who supported the amendments and applauded Prime Minister Trudeau for his assurances. Hopefully, the Liberal Party hierarchy took a lesson from this convention and will take steps to address complaints on the process that we had this year, and we won’t be having a repeat performance in 2018 if and when other proposals like this get put forward.